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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550267">Perpetual Motion</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/costumejail/pseuds/costumejail'>costumejail</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Death, Gen, One Shot, crash queens and motorbabies, hm, i think archetypes is the word, its also unedited beyond what grammarly does in my google docs so, its just me vibing on my interpretations on them as like. zone archetypes, just as kind of like a how does this life end thing its not graphic, thats all it is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:19:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,091</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/costumejail/pseuds/costumejail</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What makes someone a crash queen? What makes a motorbaby?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Perpetual Motion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Crash queens are, first and foremost, fast. It’s more about hearing a crash queen go by than seeing them because odds are by the time you figure out where they’re coming from they’re long gone. They’re wildfire, eating up the sand, dirt, pavement, whatever their bike is on ends up with scorch marks when a crash queen passes by. Crash queens are about extremes. The searing heat of high noon or the icy chill of a moonless midnight. Sitting stock still in the second before the starting gun or rocketing around the track in a blur of aluminum and exhaust. There’s no compromising with a crash queen.</p><p>They run solo more often than not, but when they congregate for a race they cover the desert as far as the eye can see. It’s not that they don’t have a sense of community, anyone that’s been at the CrashTrack when a drac squad gets sighted knows how, well, fast the queens can mobilize to get everyone one a bike and away from the danger. It’s that competition is in their veins and tempers run higher than the whine of an engine as it pushes down the last hundred meters of a drag strip. Crash queens are all bright clothing and flashy bikes, wide smiles and wicked sharp laughs to match the switchblade they won’t hesitate to pull at the first sign of trouble. </p><p>Nine times out of ten, a crash queen is a city kid. The kind to bust their way out of the city moving as fast as they could and discover that they never wanted to stop running. What little individuality the city let them have turns high octane and electric under the unfiltered glare of the sun. The first derby takes a rookie kid on an unpainted bike and spits out a firecracker champion or someone with a smouldering fire to be better, louder, <em> faster. </em> They push themselves hard and their bikes take a beating, but there’s always another drac ready to make an unwilling donation to the machinery of a crash queen’s desire when the engine fails or the tires burst or the body crumples in a collision. It’s not a big deal to lose a bike, some queens take pride in how many they’ve gone through before they retire and some brag about how they’re still riding the same two wheels from day one but in the end, the only thing about a bike that matters is how fast it can go.</p><p>And nine times out of ten, it’s the speed that does them in. A too-sharp turn sends them skidding under the wheels of another racer or the brakes don’t kick in fast enough and they miscalculate a jump and smear themselves over a patch of hard-packed sand. A crash queen lives for the sting of sand on their face at the moment before they overtake the rider in front of them and they’re more than willing to die for it too. A moment is all it takes to go from being a force to be reckoned with to being another forgotten name on an old roster. The thing about running solo is, who knew you well enough to remember you? A fallen crash queen gets their name splashed up on a crumbling wall, maybe their logo if that was recognizable enough and after that? Well, there’s always a big enough crowd at a derby that no one will notice a face they never really saw through a helmet.</p><p>Motorbabies, on the other hand, exist in the in-between. You think motorbabies and you think sunsets, sunrises, golden light settling over everything as a convoy rolls in from the west. The roar of the engines would be the first thing to alert you, but there’s no rush if you want to catch a glimpse of them. The dust cloud is the next thing you’ll notice, miles long and sky-high, kicked up from uncountable tires as they spread across the sand as they head nowhere and everywhere. </p><p>And they spread across the sand. Life for a motorbaby is an endless, ever-changing journey. They roll in packs, herds, convoys, whatever they call themselves, their groups range anywhere from eight riders to hundreds of them. They’re communities, <em> families </em> they say. They aren’t always related to each other, but there’s a bond in the blood of motorbabies that keeps them together. And it extends past just one gang. Any motorbaby can find another crew in a moment of need, whether the need is for help, backup, or just a warm spot by the fire. A lone motorbaby might show up at a zone bar to toss back drinks and swap stories with the more stagnant desert-dwellers but even alone, a motorbaby is never on their own.</p><p>It’s not an exclusive thing, it just happens that motorbabies tend to be desertborn. Motorbabies get committed, have kids, and raise them to chase, <em> something</em>, across the zones. Whether its freedom, the breeze in their hair, hidden oases, or buildings that haven’t been completely demolished by BL/ind. When they’re raised on the move like that, it’s hard not to feel trapped by living in one spot. For a city kid to be a motorbaby is really something special. There’s a structure to motorbaby communities that not every city kid can adjust to. And there’s a preservation instinct that comes from having to make everything last for your whole life. Motorbabies are leather, steel, prewar bikes lovingly maintained by calloused hands. Everything is fixed, passed down, and remade for as long as possible. A motorbaby might wear a jacket from someone that watched the pig bombs fall and, if they press their nose close enough to the collar, still smell the ash.</p><p>They’re storytellers, healers, the hearts of the zones. Of all the zonedwellers, motorbabies are the youngest. And they’re the oldest. Anyone can find a seat at a fireside when motorbabies are camped near a stronghold and hear stories from before the wars, before the city, from people who are only a few generations away from the origin. They’re undiluted memory of a better time and the prototype for the world that ‘joys are working towards. It’s said that killjoys never die, and that may be true, but motorbabies do. They’re just never forgotten. Most motorbabies worship the Phoenix Witch, and even those that don’t still know how a soul moves to the next world. Motorbabies are always on the move, and once they’ve moved on they never quite return to the same place.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the direct descendant of the note i have saved on my phone from this one night i got REALLY high and had an epiphany about the types of zone dwellers and ive been thinking about it for LITERALLY three months trying to figure out how to work it into my canon. So I gave up and now its a little standalone thing.<br/>Let me know what you think!! In a comment here or at my</p></blockquote></div></div>
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